Software Details

We are pleased to announce the launch of Phon 1.3, which offers a vastarray of improvements over all previous preview and development versions.

Brief DescriptionPhon is a software program that greatly facilitates a number of tasksrequired for the analysis of phonological development. Phon supportsmultimedia data linkage, unit segmentation, multiple-blind transcription,automatic labeling of data, and systematic comparisons between target(model) and actual (produced) phonological forms. All of these functionsare accessible through a user-friendly graphical interface. Databasesmanaged within Phon can also be queried using a powerful search interface.This software program works on both Mac OS X and Windows platforms, isfully compliant with the CHILDES format, and supports Unicode fontencoding. Phon is being made freely available to the community asopen-source software. It meets specific needs related to the study of firstlanguage phonological development (including babbling), second languageacquisition, and speech disorders. Phon will facilitate data exchange amongresearchers and the construction of a shared PhonBank database, another newinitiative within CHILDES to support methodological and empirical needs ofresearch in all ares of phonological development.

Discussion Group: Phon users are encouraged to subscribe to the discussion group (no Gmailaccount required to subscribe):http://groups.google.com/(from this site, enter Phon in the search field and follow the instructionsto join the group). Group's email address (for message posting):phon@googlegroups.com

AcknowledgmentsFunding: Current development of Phon and PhonBank is supported by theNational Institute of Health. Earlier development of Phon was funded bygrants from National Science Foundation, Canada Fund for Innovation, SocialSciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Petro-Canada Fund forYoung Innovators, and the Office of the Vice-President (Research) and theFaculty of Arts at Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Dictionaries: Built-in dictionaries of pronounced forms were obtained fromseveral organizations, to which we are indebted:

Special Thanks: While it is impossible to name everyone who ended up beinginvolved in one way or another in this project, we owe special thanks to awonderful group of early adopters and beta testers, without whom it wouldhave been much more difficult to produce the current software. Theseinclude researchers and PhD students from Universidade da Lisboa;Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; Center for Advanced Research inTheoretical Linguistics; Universiteit Leiden; Radboud UniversiteitNijmegen; École Normale Supérieure; Université Lumière Lyon 2; UniversitéParis 3; Université Paris 10; and Memorial University of Newfoundland.